Even though we all make mistakes, when certain people or organizations mess up, it’s a bigger deal. Therefore, when a company like Google seemingly breaks its own policy, it gets a lot of attention.

Aaron Wall, the author of SEO Book, first broke the news after discovering it in one of his forums. In short, Google apparently violated its own Webmaster Guidelines for paid links as part of a marketing campaign for Google Chrome.

“It was obviously paid exposure,” said Wall.

Shortly after this interview was conducted, Google responded to the incident and devalued its Chrome landing page for “at least 60 days,” according to the company’s Webspam Head Matt Cutts.

In a statement to WebProNews, a Google spokesperson said:
“Google never agreed to anything more than online ads. We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. We’re now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again.”

Wall did tell us that he hoped that, going forward, Google would be more “lenient” when dealing with others since mistakes can happen to anyone, even search giants.